


We Are Family (Even Though You're Trying To Kill Me)

by AnonymousKitten



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: Astronauts, Betrayal, Found Family, Gen, Here we go, I will make you cry, LGBT+, Other, all characters are badass, and I will enjoy it, and then i will hit you with the angst hammer and you will cry, badass enby character, badass female main character, funny nicknames, hell yeah first fic on ao3, i am going to put way more effort into this than i probably should, i dont know how ao3 works and at this point im too afraid to ask, i swear on my honor that i will make you become emotionally attached to these characters, pretty colors go brrr, romance is the subplot and will not be a main focus in the story, the fic that nobody wanted and nobody deserved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26636479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousKitten/pseuds/AnonymousKitten
Summary: Cyan's crewmates aboard the Skeld are practically her family. Deep in space, on a mission that will take years to complete - that has already been going on for years - there is nobody else. Under normal circumstances, Cyan has no doubt that half the people on this ship would hate each other, but in space, you have to trust your crewmates. You have to learn to live with them. Cyan trusts her crewmates, her family, with her life. Even the newbie, who was sent from HQ only a few days ago.But when Purple turns up dead, everything changes. Trust that Cyan thought would stay strong forever begins to crumble, and her friends turn against each other, lashing out in anger and aggression to disguise the fear that has knotted itself into every crewmember's chest.After all, deep in space, they are alone on this ship. Who else could have done it, but a member of their crew?
Relationships: Crewmate & Impostor (Among Us), Crewmate/Crewmate (Among Us), Crewmate/Impostor (Among Us)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new person joins the crew of the Skeld, and introductions are made.

It was time for dinner aboard the Skeld, and as always, it was utter chaos. The twelve crew members spread out across two tables, helmets scattered on the floor, the industrial steel tabletop already dirty with crumbs and little drops of water scattered across it. The Skeld's crew didn't know the meaning of the word "clean." Apart from scheduled breaks and meal times, the crew was busy with their work all day, helmets and suits on, almost completely isolated from the others on the ship. They all made the most of the time they were given to socialize. During dinner time, that meant crowding as close together as possible, arguing with each other and passing stories and jokes around as they ate.

There were rules and regulations in place to keep the peace, of course, but after the first few months aboard the small ship, everybody stopped pretending to care about them. It had been almost two years since the mission had started, and honestly, they were all like a family. Closer than a family, even. A big, discordant, chaotic team.

Today was even more chaotic than usual, because today was a special day. Today, their new crew member had arrived from HQ; a nervous, jumpy girl named Dorothy Lee. The suit that she wore was dark green, the standard HQ-supplied astronaut suit that all of them had been given. There was a sticker pasted on the side of her helmet of a pink flower. No doubt that had been put there by Blue the first time he'd gotten close enough to her to make his move. Somehow, Blue had gotten his hands on a bunch of stickers, and everyone in the crew had at least one sticker pasted somewhere on their suits. Poor Lime had a sticker of a roll of toilet paper stuck front and center on their helmet, right in between their eyes. It must've made it difficult for them to see much of anything.

Since this was the first time all of them were together with the new recruit, the crew surrounded Dorothy, bombarding her with good-natured jokes and friendly mockery, and regaling her with elaborate stories that weren't all entirely true. Yellow, who had been in two missions before, told Dorothy stories of wild adventures on planets that everyone there knew for a fact didn't exist. White interrupted Yellow every few minutes with a correction to his story, laughing the whole time. He hadn't met Yellow until the beginning of this mission, and he'd never heard any of the stories that Yellow was telling.

"Get down off your soap box, Yellow, before you fill poor Lee's head with lies," Cyan commented with a laugh, interrupting Yellow halfway through a description of an alien he'd once fought.

Yellow huffed and turned to glare at Cyan. In response, Cyan only grinned lazily, her arms crossed over her chest. She was leaning back against one of the tables in the cafeteria, Red sitting cross-legged on the table behind her and braiding her long auburn hair.

"What would you know about my past missions?" Yellow retorted. "This is only your first mission, Cyan, and it's been pretty tame. You don't know anything about what dangers live on other planets."

"Ooh, scary," Cyan said mockingly. "Don't listen to him, Lee, he doesn't know anything about 'what dangers live on other planets'."

Dorothy blinked, surprised. "Cyan? I thought your name was Helen."

"Cyan's a nickname," Cyan explained. "My suit's cyan, so I'm Cyan."

"Oh." Dorothy looked a little bit surprised. She smiled awkwardly. "That makes sense."

"Yep," Cyan said. "The dumbass who's been telling you tall tales is August, aka Yellow. This is Evie." She pointed her thumb over her shoulder at Red. "Pretty sure you can figure out our nicknames on your own."

Dorothy nodded.

"Nice to meet you," Red told Dorothy. "We don't follow rules here, but if you tamper with anything in the engine rooms, I'll throw you out into space."

"Haha...thanks for the warning," Dorothy laughed nervously.

"No problem," Red said with a grin.

White cleared his throat suddenly. "Better finish eating," he reminded everyone. "It's back to work in two minutes."

"Shit, I forgot!" Blue began to shovel down the rest of the food on his plate, swallowing enormous amounts of it at a time without even chewing much at all beforehand. Dorothy stared at him, looking slightly alarmed. Blue didn't even notice.

"Hair tie, Cyan," Red said.

Cyan pulled a hair tie off her wrist and passed it back to Red, who took it and tied off the end of the braid she'd just finished. "All done," Red said, handing Cyan her helmet. "Take a look."

"Oh, that looks nice," Cyan said, staring at her reflection in her helmet's glass faceplate. "Thanks, Red."

"Uh-huh. You owe me, Cyan."

"Sure."

_Beep! Beep! Beep!_

Everyone groaned as the alarm went off. Time to go back to work. Dorothy stood up and just watched awkwardly as the others grabbed their helmets and put them on, leaving their dirty plates on the table and exchanging goodbyes before heading off to their stations. Cyan tucked her own helmet under her arm and stayed behind with Dorothy, White, and Purple.

"I thought Brown was on clean-up duty today," White said, frowning at Purple.

"He won a bet, so I owed him," Purple explained. Cyan couldn't see his face, but he sounded annoyed about it. She didn't blame him. Clean-up duty sucked.

"Okay then," White said. "Get to work."

He turned to Dorothy as Purple began to collect the plates off the tables. "Lee, you're assigned to the med bay for now," he said. "Follow Cyan, she'll explain how it works. Understood?"

"Yes," Dorothy said.

"Good."

Cyan grinned at Dorothy. "C'mon, this way," she said. Dorothy nodded, and they walked out of the room together, Cyan leading the way to the med bay. Dorothy walked next to her, looking around.

"What did Miller...um...White mean by 'for now'?" Dorothy asked.

"When he was talking about your assigned station?" Cyan asked.

Dorothy nodded.

"Newbies have to learn how to work in every station before they're assigned one permanently," Cyan explained. "If someone, like maybe Yellow, got sick or hurt and couldn't do his job, then someone else would have to fill in for him until he got better. If everyone knows how to work all the stations, then we won't have a problem with finding a way for his job to get done without him doing it."

"That makes sense," Dorothy said. "I wasn't told anything about that system before I got here, though."

"That's cause we all came up with it ourselves," Cyan said. "HQ isn't organized at all, so there are things that the rules and regulations don't apply to, and plenty scenarios happen that HQ would never tell you how to deal with. We've made our own set of rules here."

"Oh." Despite the clunky suit and helmet hiding her reactions, Cyan could tell that Dorothy was more nervous than ever now.

Cyan patted her on the back. "You'll be fine," she said. "We haven't had any trouble in the last two years this mission has been going, I don't see why anything bad would happen now."

"All right."

They reached the med bay, and Cyan walked inside. "All right, Lee, pay attention," she said. "'Cause I'm only explaining this once."

\-----

_Beep! Beep! Beep!_

Cyan blinked and looked up, surprised. She hadn't realized it had been that long. That had been the alarm to announce the end of work for the day. Dorothy glanced over at her, looking a little bit uncertain about what to do.

Far off in another part of the ship, Cyan heard a loud cheer. She rolled her eyes and pulled her helmet off. "Break time," she told Dorothy. "C'mon, I'll show you where we hang out normally."

"Okay." Dorothy took off her own helmet, sighing in relief. She followed Cyan out of the med bay and through the ship.

"Green! Cyan! You got here!" Red exclaimed as Dorothy followed Cyan into the break room. "Finally!"

Dorothy blinked, looking at Red. "Green?"

"Well, yeah, loser," Red said. "You're part of our crew now, you gotta have a nickname, don't you?"

Dorothy's cheeks flushed at that statement. "Right," she said.

"You assholes gonna hurry up and get over here?" Purple called over to them. "We'll start this game without you if you don't!"

In the middle of the tiny break room, everyone was sitting in a circle on the floor. Orange and Purple were watching what was going on in the doorway, and the others were watching Pink deal out playing cards to everyone in the circle. Brown was fiddling with a rubix cube as he lay with his head in Lime's lap, a bored expression on his face.

"We're playing Go Fish," Red said. "Want to play with us?"

"Okay," Cyan said. She looked over at Green. "You wanna play? It gets pretty crazy."

Green smiled. "Sure," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To make things easier for everyone (including myself), here's a list of the characters and their names:
> 
> \- Evie Johnson (Red)
> 
> \- Ryan Scott (Blue)
> 
> \- Dorothy Lee (Green)
> 
> \- Terry Baker (Pink)
> 
> \- Luis Hayes (Orange)
> 
> \- August Davis (Yellow)
> 
> \- Sandra Hall (Black)
> 
> \- Miller White (White)
> 
> \- Eugene Phillips (Purple)
> 
> \- Russell Turner (Brown)
> 
> \- Helen Allen (Cyan)
> 
> \- Danny Moore (Lime)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew has breakfast and argues over coffee, and White goes on a mission

Green didn't sleep well the first night. Cyan knew this because she was awake as well, reading a book. Green was the first out of bed in the morning, and Cyan kept reading for about half an hour before she decided to get out of bed as well. She shuffled out into the hallway and towards the bathroom to take a shower before breakfast.

_Beep! Beep! Beep!_

The wake-up alarm sounded, and by the time Cyan was finished with her shower, she could hear the others waking up in the other room. She got dressed quickly, then left.

Green, Yellow, and White were already in the cafeteria when Cyan got there. White's hair was damp, but styled frustratingly well, and he looked awake and cheerful. Cyan hated him for it. Red looked like a literal zombie, and smelled even worse. She was gulping down coffee from the biggest mug they had. Cyan hated _her_ , too. Red always got to the cafeteria faster than everyone else, and therefore claimed the biggest mug for herself. Cyan didn't know how Red did it. She'd seen Red sleeping in her bunk when Cyan left to take a shower just fifteen minutes ago. It was _so_ unfair.

"You look grumpy, Cyan," Blue said, popping up out of nowhere and making Cyan jump. "Have a sticker!" And before Cyan could protest, Blue slapped her shoulder. Cyan glanced down, and sure enough, there was a little sticker of a fried egg where Blue had slapped her.

"Wow, thanks, Blue," Cyan said flatly. "Red, pass the coffee."

Without a word, Red grabbed the whole coffee pot and handed it to Cyan. Cyan grabbed it and then almost dropped it, not expecting it to be so heavy. Red must've got here recently. Usually there was much less coffee in the pot once Cyan got to it. This was going to be a good day, Cyan thought, if the universe had blessed her with such a rare and nice occurrence. Cyan poured herself a cup of coffee, then passed the pot to Yellow, who looked dead on his feet.

There was a loud thud from one of the doors as Pink stumbled into the room and promptly ran into one of the tables. "Guyss, I'm hungryyy," he whined. "Where's the food?"

"It's your turn to make it, Pink," White said.

"Nooo...."

"Don't worry, just have coffee!" Blue said.

"And shut up," Red grumbled. "I fucking hate all of you."

"What? Even me?" Blue asked.

" _Especially_ you."

"Aww..."

"Purple! Hey, Purple, make me some food!" Pink exclaimed. "You're the best cook on the ship, pleeease?"

"Fuck off, Pink, don't talk to me before I've had my coffee."

Cyan glanced over her shoulder as footsteps approached, and moved out of the way to let Purple past her. He was followed by Pink, who trailed hopefully behind him like a lost puppy. Purple completely ignored him, taking his time on making himself a cup of coffee and then taking a long, slow sip of it.

"Can you please make breakfast now?" Pink said in a rush.

Purple rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever. Your food's awful anyways." He took his coffee and disappeared into the kitchen.

"Damn right it is," Red said. "I got sick last time I ate your bread pudding."

"Well how was I supposed to know the bread had gone moldy?" Pink protested.

"You fucking check, that's how!" Red snapped. "You have eyes, don't you? Use them!"

"If you're having trouble with your vision, have Cyan check it out in the med bay," White suggested.

"My eyes are fine, I'm just bad at cooking!"

"You fucking are," Red grumbled, downing the rest of her coffee and filling her mug again.

"Who signed him up for kitchen duty, anyways?" Black asked.

Everyone looked at White, who sighed and rolled his eyes.

"We all have to do our fair share," he said. "Pink shouldn't be able to get out of kitchen duty just because he's bad at it."

"Yes he damn well should!" Red snapped. "He's worse than bad! If I didn't know him, I'd say he was trying to _poison_ us!"

"He'll just convince someone else to cook for him when it's his turn, anyways," Yellow said.

"He will," Black agreed.

Everyone except for Green added in their own comments, all of them agreeing that Pink was a menace in the kitchen and needed to be stopped. White looked like he was getting a headache. He sighed, shaking his head. "All right, if you all agree," he said. "Pink, you aren't allowed in the kitchen anymore."

"Oh thank god," Pink said. "I hate kitchen duty."

Blue slapped him on the back. "The feeling's mutual," he said. "We all also hated it when you were on kitchen duty."

Pink laughed.

\-----

After breakfast, everyone went off to their stations, and Green followed Red to the lower engine. Cyan had been in the med bay for five minutes before White and Lime dragged Pink kicking and yelling into the room. Cyan looked up, surprised and a bit annoyed. She hadn't been expecting to be doing any actual work today. If she had, she would've actually slept at some point the night before. Curse her stupid dumbass brain.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Check Pink's eyes," White said.

"Oh," Cyan said. She hadn't thought White had been entirely serious when he'd suggested that at breakfast. He was probably trying to find a way to get Pink back into doing kitchen duty, Cyan thought with a wince of sympathy. Poor Pink. When White wanted something, he never stopped until he got it.

"No!" Pink exclaimed. "My eyes are fine, you fucking assholes!"

Cyan sighed. "Calm down, Pink, it'll literally take ten seconds," she said. "Stand right there."

She pointed at the scanner, and White and Lime dragged Pink onto it. The scanner did its thing, and Cyan glanced at one of the monitors on the wall. "Your eyes are fine," she said. "Now get lost."

Pink shuddered, pushing White and Lime away as they let him go. "I hate that thing," he grumbled. "It feels _weird_."

"I'm so sorry," Cyan said dully, too tired to even try sounding like she cared.

"Sorry, man," Lime said, patting Pink's back. "At least it was only ten seconds."

"Yeah, sure," Pink said. "Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Especially you, White."

"At least your eyes are okay," White said. He didn't really sound like he meant it. If Pink's eyesight had been bad, then Cyan would've gotten him some glasses and then bam, back to kitchen duty for Pink. Because clearly the reason Pink's cooking was so bad was because his eyes were fucked up.

"Just get back to work," Cyan said. "White, stop being a little shit and give it up. Pink isn't going back on kitchen duty."

"But-"

"Oh, that's what this was about?" Lime interrupted. "I swear, if Pink goes back on kitchen duty, I will riot."

"Against your captain?" White retorted. "That's mutiny, Danny."

White and Lime glared at each other. The helmets made it pretty un-threatening, though. Cyan could hardly see either of their expressions. She didn't particularly care, either. Why were they still in her med bay?

"Guys, literally everyone voted me out of the kitchen," Pink spoke into the silence.

"I didn't," White said angrily. "And I'm your captain."

"This ship is a democracy," Lime reminded White.

With a quiet scoff, White turned and left. Lime watched him go. Then they sighed. "Well, I'll get back to work now," they said. "C'mon, Pink."

"Finally," Cyan said. "Get the fuck out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna write Green's POV for this chapter, but then I got a different idea. Next chapter will be from Green's POV, and I'll probably post it tomorrow!  
> On another note, I listened to 'Soulless Creatures' by AURORA on repeat while I wrote this. It's a pretty good song. You guys should listen to it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Green gets to know her new crewmates, part 1

It took a few days to get used to everything on the Skeld. Green was a bit overwhelmed at first, she wasn't going to lie. The schedule was much different than she was used to, and the crew was...kind of crazy, honestly. Everything about the Skeld and its crew was the complete opposite of what Green's training had taught her. Someone had messed with the alarms and made them go off automatically at the start and end of each break. That had nearly sent Green into a panic on the first day, when the alarms went off only five minutes after she'd gotten into the ship. She was expecting the crew to do something, but instead they all acted like it was normal. In fact, they'd all looked happy. Because, of course, the alarm had gone off to announce the beginning of dinner time.

There was something wrong with them, honestly. One day the reactor or something would overheat, and when the alarms went off they'd all think it was time to take a break from work.

Also, the time system the crew operated on was _completely different_ from the one that HQ had _said_ every ship was supposed to use. Their days were shorter, with longer break times, and _how_ did they even get any of their work done on time? And the lights throughout the entire ship dimmed to a soft glow during their nights, even though the crew could've left those alone and just turned off the lights in the bedrooms, but _nooo_ , it had to look like it was actually night time, and...and it was actually really nice.

It had been years since Green had been on an actual planet for more than a day or two. This was closer to that feeling than she'd had on any other ship. Especially not HQ.

"Oh, yeah, HQ is completely oblivious to the actual needs of humans," Red said when Green mentioned it on the second day. "They just said, 'Here is the most efficient way that these people can spend their time,' and didn't give any thought to things like comfort or happiness."

"Oh," Green said.

Red glanced over at Green, raising an eyebrow. She wasn't wearing her helmet; something else that people in HQ had said was Very Very Bad And Dangerous. "I don't see you doing your work, Green," she scolded. "We don't have all day, you know. Breaks are mandatory."

Green jumped. "Ah, right! Sorry!" She went back to connecting the wires she'd been working on. Red went back to work as well.

"Hey, Red...what happens if the engines or something malfunction in the middle of the night?" Green asked. "Everyone'll be asleep by then, right?"

"Alarms go off," Red said.

"But the alarms go off at break times-"

"Those are different alarms," Red explained. "The danger ones sound a lot different, and they're _way_ louder. Trust me, if there was something wrong, you'd know right away."

"Oh...okay."

Red patted Green's back. "You're a good kid," she said with a grin. "You'll do just fine."

"B-But I'm not a kid? I'm older than you?"

"When did I ever fucking ask? Stop lazing around and do your work already."

\-----

On the third day, Green went to work in the electrical room with Pink. He looked grumpy and a bit tense, throwing nervous glances at the door once or twice every few minutes. Green knew the reason why. The night before, Pink had ranted loudly about White and how determined he was to get Pink back onto kitchen duty. It sounded like White was really determined to figure out a way to do it, and judging by the way the rest of the crew had reacted, Green doubted that White was going to give up anytime soon.

Pink was a good teacher despite his anxiety, though. He managed to teach Green how his job worked about an hour or two before lunch, and then Green just helped him with the stuff he needed to do. Something Green was starting to appreciate about this ship was that there was always something to do, and hardly any of it was boring.

"So what's up with White?" Green asked cautiously. "He's kind of..."

"Awful?" Pink said. "Rude? Insensitive? I know, he totally is."

"Uhm...sure," Green said. That wasn't quite what she was going for, but close enough.

"He's a perfectionist asshole," Pink said. "He cares way too much about rules and shit, and he always excuses it by saying he's the captain of the ship, which he _is_ , but he's still an asshole! We had to all team up and argue with him for _weeks_ before he let us change around the schedule on the ship, because even though he _knew_ our idea was good, he didn't want to go against HQ's rules! Fuck HQ, I don't give a shit about whether they think our schedule is valid or not. We get shit done on time, don't we? That's literally all that should matter, but nooo, HQ doesn't care. White doesn't care, either. He gets all worked up over things being fair, but it _isn't fair_ , and-"

Green tuned out after a few minutes had passed and Pink was still ranting. He didn't seem like he'd be stopping anytime soon. Green just kept working and nodded occasionally, pretending that she was listening to what he was saying.

He didn't stop complaining until the alarm went off to announce that it was time for lunch.

Good lord. Green had to deal with another half a day of this?

\-----

She didn't have to deal with another half-day of Pink ranting about White, because after lunch, Black grabbed Green's arm and pulled her over to the side of the room.

"Hey, how much have you learned about Pink's job?" Black asked.

Green blinked, confused. "Uhm...he's taught me everything," she said. "I've just been helping him with stuff for the past few hours."

"Good," Black said. "I've already told Pink, so I'll teach you how to do security this afternoon. It's pretty easy, so you don't need a full day to do it. And then Purple can teach you comms."

"Oh" Green said. "Okay."

After lunch, Green followed Black to Security. Black, like Pink, was very chatty; but unlike Pink, she didn't go off on angry rants about other crew members. She was happy to answer all of the many questions Green had about how the ship worked.

They reached Security and walked inside. It was a small room, and there was a desk pushed against one of the walls, with a bunch of security cameras covering the wall above it. There was a single chair sitting in front of the cameras. Black grabbed another chair from the other side of the room and brought it over to the cameras, setting it down and sitting in the chair that was already there.

"All right," Black said, pulling a deck of cards out of her pocket and starting to shuffle them. "This is a pretty easy job. There's a security camera in every hallway on the Skeld, and each one corresponds to one of these screens. Each screen is numbered..." Black stopped shuffling the cards for long enough to tap a small sticker on the corner of one of the cameras, then resumed, "and that paper on the wall over there says which number goes to each hallway."

"Okay," Green said.

Black started to deal the cards, five of them going to Green and five to herself. "Okay, that's all," she said. "Want to play Go Fish?"

Green blinked, surprised. "But...shouldn't we be watching the cameras?"

"Nah," Black said. "I've known all the dorks on this ship for years, they won't cause any trouble. I haven't used the cams since the first year of the mission."

"Oh, okay."

Black set the deck of cards between her and Green, and grinned at Green. "You go first," she said.

"Sure." Green picked up the cards Black had given her. "I'm really good at Go Fish, so prepare to be beaten."

Black laughed. "Yeah, right," she said. "You've got no chance against me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha this took way longer than a day to write


End file.
